Episode 105: What I Thought Was Cool Growing Up in the 1980s and 1990s(7-26-2023)

Episode 105 is an extended trip down memory lane. It's a hybrid episode, part list, part Back In the Day, with some embarrassing stories sprinkled in.
Growing up we all have our differing opinions on what is considered 'cool.' Born in the 1970s I was a child of the 80s and a teenager of the 90s. There are a lot of cool things I saw, watched, listened to, wore, and ate. Some things have aged well. Some things have not aged well. You can be the judge as I break down what I thought was cool growing up.
One caveat is that many of these things in this episode were things that I either saw the 'cool kids' use/have or were things I thought would make me appear cool in their eyes. So whether you're my age, enjoy nostalgia, or are just curious about what was considered cool in the 80s and 90s this episode will have something for everyone.
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Helpful Links from this Episode

• The Lady of the Dunes.com
• Purchase My New Book Cape Cod Beyond the Dunes!
• Kiwi's Kustoms - Etsy
• DJ Williams Music
• KeeKee's Cape Cod Kitchen
• Christopher Setterlund's YouTube Channel
• Christopher Setterlund.com
• The In My Footsteps Podcast Blog

Listen to Episode 104 here.

Transcript

Hello world and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the Vacation Destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts. And this is episode 105. This is another episode, another subject that I've wanted to talk about for a long time. This is gonna be a really fun one.

It's gonna be kind of a hybrid, a list, a back in the day segment. Several embarrassing stories and more all wrapped up in the title of what I thought was cool growing up in the 1980s and nineties. I'm a seventies baby, an eighties child, a nineties teen. There's a lot of ground to cover. So let's preface all of this by me saying that what's going to follow are things that I thought the "cool kids" in my school liked or had or used.

And that's not to say that things on this list I didn't really enjoy because for the most part, I did. But everyone who's listening to this. You know that if during school, I mean, it was a rough time, the best way to fit in with the popular kids, the cliques, was to kind of emulate them and what they had, and I have no idea how they decided what was cool, but I think the vast, vast majority of you listening can relate to the idea of trying to make connections with other people in school.

And taking an interest in something that the popular kids liked was a quick way to at least try to make that connection. So what I'm saying is this is not going to be a list of just my likes growing up. It's going to be when I was a child of the eighties, teen of the nineties during school, the things that I associated with those popular kids.

So let's jump into this hybrid type of episode 105 of the podcast. First off, before we get into the list, I wanted to thank everybody who's been listening to the last few episodes of the podcast since I brought it back from hiatus. I wasn't sure how it was going to be received, if it was going to be forgotten, and I was blown away by episode 103, the first episode back becoming my most downloaded in its first week.

It was a pleasant surprise, and it was something that made me even more happy and excited that I brought the podcast back. So whether you're in your kitchen, whether you're at work, whether you're at the gym, or you're out walking on a hot late July day, thank you for bringing the podcast with you. I'm still trying to figure out whether I'm going to do something with subscriptions to the podcast or a Facebook fan page.

Those of you that are listening, let me know your opinion. Is that something that would interest you? I've said it a couple times that with the subscriptions, I would need to find some sort of bonus content to make it worth your while. Now granted, if you wanna support the podcast and buy me a coffee, that is very much appreciated.

I can always give you shout outs on the podcast, but subscriptions are a different animal, so I'm still trying to figure that out, but there's plenty of time for that. So what did I think was cool, or at least what I thought the cool kids thought worked. Cool. During my school years in the 80s and 90s, I've tried to divide this list up into categories to at least keep me on point as I start talking about them.

People that are my age, around my age, a lot of these things are gonna resonate with you. And I'm gonna jump into the biggest category or the most important one to me at least, and that's the music category. Those of you that have been listening to the podcast from way back know that in episode 14. I told the story about when I was an 8-year-old metalhead in the early to mid 80s.

I had actual vinyl albums from bands like Quiet Riot, Twisted Sister, Ratt Motley Crew, Van Halen. I said in that episode, and I'll say it again, I don't know where I got that taste in music from, because eight years old, that's kind of before the time that as a kid you start to wonder about how to fit in. I think in those elementary school days, you are still 100% yourself and then as the time goes on, either that self gets cultivated and you continue to grow or something happens and it gets kind of changed and you alter your path.

The first music that I associated with the Cool kids was the Beastie Boys, their first album Licensed to Ill came out in November 1986. I was in third grade. It was nine years old. So it's kind of interesting that in that old podcast episode, I said I was an 8-year-old metalhead and then nine years old, I found the Beastie Boys Fight For Your Right was a song that just blew me away.

The Beastie Boys sound was different than anything I had heard. I had very little knowledge of hip hop at nine years old on Cape Cod, and when it comes to their music, I don't know how I got introduced to it, maybe around town. I saw kids wearing Beastie Boys shirts or listening to the music, and I thought the kids looked cool, and so, oh, they listened to this music.

That's what I'll listen to. Also, I think the Beastie Boys made hip hop a little more accessible for kids like me. Where they were legit artists, but it was almost like it was safer and more acceptable to listen to Beastie Boys. And they were a group that I was into. They weren't an acquired taste for me.

Like some things that are gonna come up on this list. And that's the same for another band from around that same time, Red Hot Chili Peppers. They were underground for most of the eighties. They came out in 1984. Funk Rock, kind of rap. It's hard to believe they've been around for almost 40 years because I see them as this forever young, forever cool rock band.

That kind of changed music for me. The introduction to the Coolness, that was the Red Hot Chili Peppers, was that famous shirt with that logo. It has that symbol called the Star of Affinity in the center with Red Hot Chili peppers. The words going around it. I don't know if I saw kids wearing the shirts.

And thought that if the cool kids wore it, the band must be cool, or if it was the other way around where I thought the band was cool, and then I saw kids wearing those shirts and said, oh, they must be cool because they listened to cool music for me. It was fifth grade 1989 where I was really introduced to Red Hot Chili Peppers when they covered Stevie Wonder's song, Higher Ground.

I think before then, I had heard of them. They were kind of mythical, but I had never really heard any of their music. Because back in the mid to late eighties, chili peppers were underground. So Cape Cod especially, they're not gonna be on the radio. And I don't know if they had videos on MTV from their first couple albums.

And if I was to go to one of the record stores of the time record Town Tape World Strawberries, I don't know if they would've had any of the music playing in there or the ability to listen to it like in the nineties when you could put on the headphones and listen to certain songs from certain albums.

But once the Chili Peppers broke through with their 91 album, Blood Sugar, sex Magic, then it was off to the races. I saw them twice in concert. It was pretty wild. Another band that for me, epitomized Cool when I was growing up was Guns N Roses, Axel Rose's, shrieking Voice Slash his crazy guitar, his Long Hair Slash, with his top hat.

They were everywhere. That Appetite for Destruction album in 1987 just blew up. I remember Welcome to the Jungle, being on MTV and me being kind of freaked out by Axel Rose. He had his hair all frizzed out for that video, but the cover of that album, the Cross with the five skulls, even as a 10-year-old, I knew that was cool, even though I never had any of the t-shirts for the bands, GNR Beasties Chili Peppers.

In my mind, I knew if I wanted to impress some cool kid. If I could name off one of the songs on one of those albums and say how much I liked it, that would earn me some street cred. One group that I felt cool about listening to was Public Enemy, and again, at the time, 1989, I'm 11, 12 years old, a white kid on Cape Cod.

Listening to Public Enemy, a hip hop group talking about issues that pertain to the African American community. Something I could not relate to, but the music was awesome. Chuck D, he had and still has such a commanding voice, and Flava Flav, I guess he's kind of the comic relief. I will do a longer segment about my introduction to this hip hop genre in a future episode, but one of my closest friends at the time and one of my favorite people that I met in my life, Hasan, he got me into it, and I think I got into it not because he played it and said, here, you should listen to it, you'll like it.

It was the fact that he just played it with confidence, like, I like this music. If you like it, great. If not, whatever. And I thought that confidence was so cool. I have fond memories of my famed basketball hoop on Cherry Lane with a boombox sitting on a picnic table by the road playing Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet album.

I still have their song Who Stole the Soul on my phone, and I can always close my eyes and go back to those days, the basketball days playing that music. And I've spoken ad nauseam about. Getting into grunge music Nirvana, that was a little different. I was kind of in on the ground floor of grunge, at least in the way of when it broke through.

I heard Smells Like Teen Spirit at my friend Matt's house in his bedroom on his little, probably Casio alarm clock radio in the summer of 1991. And hearing that song and knowing that it was going to be an important moment in my life. And I must've been right about Nirvana and grunge being cool at the time when I was in high school because here it is 30 years after that song came out and I see kids that are my age that I was then, you know, 13, 14 years old, wearing shirts with Nirvana's logo on it.

And part of me wants to go up to them and say, name three of their best songs. Or say, yeah, well I was there when they were actually out. But another part of me appreciates that I was there for when Nirvana and grunge were huge, and there's still such a relevant part of pop culture and music in general 30 years later.

Those were the real music artists that I thought of as far as being cool or what the cool kids would listen to, I think it all depends on when you grew up as to what music you liked or what music you thought that the popular kids listened to. But since we just talked about. Nirvana and grunge. Let's jump into some trends and fads that I thought were cool back then because you can't talk about grunge and Nirvana without then segueing into the clothing styles of those bands.

Torn jeans and flannel shirts, to me were the definition of cool in high school. To the point that I didn't even care if cool kids thought it was cool. I did. And that made me cool. Does me saying I thought I was cool, make me cool, or does that just make me old now? Torn jeans, the more torn up, the better.

As long as they had a waistband where you could put a belt to keep them up. They could be shredded where you could see your boxer shorts or your legs through 'em. I had darker jeans that would be torn up maybe. I thought I wasn't conforming to the traditional blue jean color and torn jeans. That was something that I think the skater outcast kids of those days, they wore them anyway.

So you had to pair it with flannel shirts to have the grunge statement. I had a long sleeved red flannel shirt that I wore all the time. So much so that my senior photo is me wearing that shirt, which really makes a statement on who I thought I was at the time. If I could have done a full body shoot with my torn jeans, I would have.

But I don't think that would've gone over well in the yearbook with everyone else kind of close up smiles, and then there's me standing there with the red flannel shirt and torn jeans, and the flannel shirt had to go with you at all times. If it was summer and hot, you got some AC from the torn jeans, but you wore that flannel shirt, tie it around your waist and let it hang there.

That's dedication to the culture. Did anybody out there, I would say this was probably. Late 80s, early 90s, the pegging of jeans where you rolled up the bottoms of the legs, I don't know how many rolls was appropriate, three or four times you roll it up, they would get kind of tight around your ankles, but it was that interior fabric of the jeans that was slightly lighter color than the outside.

I don't know why that was considered cool. Rolling up your pant legs slightly. But I did it and I, that's why I remember how tight they would get and I'd be like, well, at least I look cool. Cut off the circulation of my feet. So we're starting to get a better visual of how I dressed, especially the early 90s was when this was all coming around.

Torn jeans, pegged jeans, flannel shirt. Then you've gotta have a backwards hat because nothing says rebellious white teenager on Cape Cod than wearing a backward hat. And oh, to make it even better, if you grew your hair out and you could pull your hair out through the hole in the hat like a little puff ball.

I only did that once. 'cause I never really liked growing my hair out. God, it's terrible thinking about it. I remember puberty being such a weird time for me, and I'm sure it is for most people. As your body changes, voice changes. But one thing that I loved about it was when I could grow one of those teenage weak, dirt looking goatees, I thought that was so cool to be a freshman in high school and have a goatee.

I mean, honestly, it looked like someone just rubbed dirt on my face, but that didn't matter. The 15-year-old me thought it was cool. I. Because puberty happens at different ages for different people. So there were some at my age that couldn't grow any facial hair, and there I was rocking the goatee. Did any of you guys out there grow the weak-looking goatee or mustache that looked like dirt or the beard that looked like you picked up hair off the barbershop floor and glued it to your face?

One thing that I thought the cool kids did that I never got into was hacky sack. And those kids that played that, it's like a little fabric or leather ball. I don't know if it was filled with beans or something like that, and you're kicking it with the side of your foot. You kind of do it in a circle.

That was more of the kids at the time that had that surfer look. Short-sleeve, preppy polo shirts, long board shorts, typically wearing flip flops all through the year. I never got into hackysack, but I was never asked. I wonder if any of the cool kids ever asked me to play Hacky Sack if my life would've changed.

Hacky Sack definitely seemed like a 90s thing. I don't know people that are younger today. Do you know, does Hacky Sack still, is it a thing? I haven't gone to too many big parks during the summer, so I haven't seen any groups of young people playing hackysack. But speaking of those who did play it, I mentioned kind of the surfer culture.

And these kids that at least dressed the part, I don't think any of them went surfing at 12, 13 years old. Maybe I'm wrong, but that was where I first got into OP, Ocean Pacific Clothing brand. They're kind of a surfer brand. They're still around based out of California, so definitely surfer. That's something I definitely stole from the cool kids.

Having a pair of those big board shorts with that OP written on the side. That's one. I can tell you I didn't understand it, but I knew that if I had it, I might have an in with the cool kids, whether it was board shorts, t-shirts, maybe a sticker on their bag. I saw it. And at least at the beginning had to tell my mother that I just wanted OP just because I liked it, not because I wanted to try to have an in with the cool kids.

OP was more of a middle school thing for me. By high school I was grunge and I didn't care about surfer brands. Maybe OP is still as big today as it was when I was in middle school. I don't know. I think your definition of cool changes as you age. When I was putting together my list of things for this episode, as far as what I thought was cool, OP was one of the first clothing brands.

The other one was Vuarnet. Way back in episode four of the podcast, I spoke about retro clothing brands. Op and Vuarnet were right there. Vuarnet has that huge logo. The V usually in red with a blue circle around it. Vuarnet shirt with an OP pair of board shorts. Ooh, now you're looking cool in the late 80s.

The only thing missing from the surfer look there is the actual surfing, but, oh, well, in high school though, it was about the shoes and not sneakers casual. These were ones that surfer kids, skater kids would wear. Do you remember Vans? Those shoes were kind of plain and blocky with thick white heels and the thicker laces.

But the main thing was the Van's logo on the heel. They're still around. They're casual shoes. A lot of the skateboard kids would have them, and since the skater kids were similar to the grunge kids, we had a lot of crossover. It was an easy fix for me to take some of their culture, like the Vans shoes. I was terrible at skateboarding though, so I never got into it.

I think I was too afraid to fall and bust up my elbows in my head. But in the mid 90s, if you didn't want a pair of Vans, you could always get a pair of Air Walks that were very similar. Just the name Air Walk was cool, so cool that probably seven, eight years ago I got a pair I hadn't had since high school.

I got a pair of gray air walks with a cool name and the cool kids wearing them. I was crazy not to get them. But back then, during school in the 80s and 90s, very few kids could buy their own shoes. So you had to really like them and do a good job of convincing your parents to get them for you 'cause they weren't cheap.

And exhibit A of something I thought was cool, that was definitely not cheap, were the Air Jordan shoes. I didn't need to see people wearing Air Jordans or watch Michael Jordan play to know. He was the definition of cool. I loved basketball, loved playing it, still love watching it, even though my old body won't let me play as much to this day.

I say, Michael Jordan is the best basketball player ever, and he invaded pop culture. There are still sports stars that cross over, but there's nobody that matches Jordan. He became his own brand, that Jumpman logo. The Gatorade commercials, the Nike commercials, McDonald's commercials, movies, SNL, he was hosting.

Everything about him was cool, except at the beginning when he couldn't win. The Bulls were just not good. It was him and nobody else. But those Air Jordans, the high tops, especially the old ones, they were the bulls, colors, red, black, and white. Interestingly, when the Air Jordans first went on sale in 1985, when Jordan was not really that well known, they only cost 64.99, but then Nike sold 1.5 million pairs of the shoes in the first six weeks, so they upped the price.

I remember wanting the Air Jordans so bad, but they were so expensive. That my mother with four other kids, she couldn't spend $150 in the late 1980s on a pair of sneakers for me. Back then I was mad 'cause I needed to be like the cool kids and have Air Jordans. So if I couldn't have them, at least I could play at my hoop and stick my tongue out when I was shooting like Jordan, because we know that made it even better.

But Michael Jordan, just talking about him, if you saw him play. Especially back then, mentioning to someone, 'cause I played on the basketball team. It was seventh grade through ninth grade. So, being able to talk to my teammates saying, did you see Jordan last night in whatever move he did some kind of crazy shot.

Just the fact that you were watching Michael Jordan and could recite some of his moves. The only thing better than being able to do play-by-play on Jordan's moves from a game the night before was being able to recite funny lines or famous lines from TV shows or movies at the time. That was the way I thought about getting in with the cool kids.

Mentioning some TV show that had happened the night before and, oh, did you see when this person said this line for movies? There were two that popped right to my mind. That was The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Both of those were directed by the legend, John Hughes. I think most of his movies from the eighties could fall into this category of what I thought the cool kids watched.

Weird Science, 16 candles, pretty in pink. Those last two would be more what the cool girls watched. But being in school in the years after Ferris Bueller or the Breakfast Club came out and quoting those movies randomly, at first it was me hearing kids in grades ahead of me, older kids reciting the movies, or just saying how much they liked them, that caused me to wanna watch them.

But then, as the years went on, I just liked them on their own. I think back to what a hard time it was during school and maybe some of you out there can relate. Not only trying to do your best and learn, or at least most of us tried to do our best, but also trying to fit in, worrying about what people would think about what you wore, what you said, your likes and dislikes.

God, it was exhausting. That's one of the best things about being in my forties now, is I don't care what people think about what I like. That's how this podcast came about. I speak about all the things that I enjoy, and luckily so many of you that listen have the same likes, or at least most of them. I'm sure there's gonna be some people that tune into this episode and are like, oh God, eighties and nineties, retro stuff, just nonstop and just like, oh, who cares about this stuff?

But then a lot of you that are my age or that just enjoy nostalgia, everything that I'm naming off, you're gonna be like, oh my God, I remember those days. Some of you, I bet, will even go and watch The Breakfast Club or Ferris Bueller right after this, and I will have influenced that. So you're welcome. There were far more TV shows that I thought were cool, and I think because TV was more readily available movies, you had to either go to the video store and rent it or go to the theater.

The Simpsons was my go-to show. That show debuted when I was in fifth grade and those prime years. I loved it all the way up until the movie came out in 2007, but there were so many classic episodes while I was in middle school and high school that just quoting those in school to make people laugh.

That was great. I did then and do now, still enjoy making people laugh, so quoting random Simpsons lines, definitely did it. There were a pair of other shows that I don't think I could quote as much in school that was married with children or Beavis and Butthead. I used to sneak watching Married with Children.

That came out when I was 10 years old, and if you know the show, you can imagine a 10-year-old watching it and it influencing them. But lucky for me, I was able to kind of sneak that show on at least when I was young. Then when I got older, I didn't have to. It was so raunchy for its time and really crossed into adult humor, but you really couldn't be in school in fourth, fifth, sixth grade and talk about Al Bundy going to the Nudie bar and stuff like that's not something you want to have the teacher hear you talk about, but if you mention it to the kids around you, they would think you were cool.

Like, wow, your parents let you watch Married with Children. And it was more like, no, they don't let me. I just sneak it. Beavers and butthead was the same thing. You can't talk about lighting things on fire or frog baseball, but you can make the laughs. The noises, beavers and butthead made. I had a T-shirt with the two of them on it.

I had it, I wore it all the time. It was my freshman year of high school. I can remember kids asking me if I actually watched it or if I just had the shirt. So then I would've to recite some of the episodes, kinda school them. It's amazing how ahead of its time Beavis and Butthead was as far as adult cartoons. I'm actually shocked they didn't get banned or at least banned in more places.

And then there was X-Files which was in high school to be able to talk to people about the latest adventures of Mulder and Scully and recite the tale of the latest episode like you were making the story up. Like sitting around a campfire, and of course you couldn't be a young boy in the late 1980s and not watch primetime wrestling from the World Wrestling Federation.

That was my big prize each week, Monday nights, getting to stay up late despite it being a school night to watch wrestling. It was a reward for doing well in school. I could watch Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Roddy Piper, macho man, Randy Savage, ultimate Warrior. I am sure I'll do a deep dive into my wrestling fandom in the 80s, but most of you guys out there, you at least watched some sort of wrestling show.

There were very few that didn't watch it at all, but naturally, you know that watching wrestling when you're in elementary and middle school leads to you actually performing the moves on your friends at recess or at home after school. Did any of you out there do that? Did you have pay-per-view parties where you would wrestle?

I had those, my friends and I would wrestle in the yard after it was over. And if you couldn't have the cool kids accept you, you could always grab 'em and give 'em a pile driver on the playground. Not that I ever did that. One of the coolest of the cool things from growing up, and you've heard me talk about it quite a bit on this podcast, was Garbage Pail Kids and collecting those, especially at the beginning when they looked like the Cabbage Patch dolls.

But it was them doing all kinds of horrible stuff, puking, peeing themselves, being covered in dirt and flies, every sort of gross, nasty bit of humor that kids liked. I had a photo album, a big, thick, probably four-inch-thick photo album full of garbage pail kids. And obviously that thing is long gone, but I wonder how much those things would be worth.

And you'd collect them. You'd get the packs of cards and you'd find friends of yours or people you knew that had the same name as the characters on the card. So you could go show them, look, you look like this person here. Being cool in the late 80s, early 90s meant getting on your bike and riding down to the corner store by yourself or with friends that you still could actually do that back then and not worry too much by yourself.

A couple of packs of Garbage Pail Kids. For me, I would also get packs of Mega Warheads candy. Do you all remember those? Those that are my age? There was this face on the front with a head exploding. They were either sour or hot. You'd suck on these candies that looked like little throat lozenges or Jolly Ranchers, and it would either turn very sour or very spicy hot.

That was another definition of cool. Let's see if you can handle a sour warhead or two; that'll make you cool. Or getting a jawbreaker and trying to chew it without ruining your teeth like you were trying to prove yourself to people or now and later. These are things I was thinking of when going to the candy store for this episode.

Warheads especially, that just screams early nineties to me. And they still have them. I don't eat candy anymore 'cause I like to keep my teeth, but maybe I'll pick up a package of warheads, could wash it down with a full sugar soda. Seeing the Mountain Dew commercials, I. Especially in the early to mid nineties.

I mean, I liked Mountain Dew anyway, but those commercials with the extreme sports and everyone do the do drinking it full sugar, extra caffeine because we all know your cooler version of yourself when you're super hyped up on sugar and caffeine. This is the way my brain worked at 13, 14 years old. So you can only imagine when I discovered Jolt Cola, which I spoke at length about in episode 25.

It was kind of like the first energy drink 'cause it was so overloaded with sugar and caffeine, but it was disguised as a traditional soda with that lightning bolt on the can that meant good God, watch out. I drank so much Jolt Cola, especially in high school. I mentioned before, but when I had my camcorder that I bought in 1994, basically all of the skits that I made with my friends, they were all fueled by Jolt Cola.

I don't think it's any different than drinking a Red Bull today. It just felt more dangerous, which made you seem more cool if you were chugging Jolt Cola and sucking on mega warheads. As we start to wrap up my trip down memory lane as far as what I thought was cool or what the cool kids thought was cool during the eighties and nineties, I wanted to save this one for the end 'cause it's a really funny story that I have not shared.

BMX is a name that I'm sure most of you have heard of. BMX is a type of bicycle, more of a racing type bike. In fact, BMX is bicycle motocross is kind of what it stands for. They're still around, but in the 80s they were the definition of cool if you had a BMX bike and you could go either set up ramps on your streets to jump off of or find places.

Along the power lines to maybe do jumps. When I thought of things that were cool for the eighties and nineties, BMX was almost the first thing that popped in my head. But as a kid being one of five, my mother and stepfather couldn't afford to buy me a custom-made BMX bike. They weren't cheap, so it seemed like it would be only a dream, but as luck would have it or fate would have it, my stepbrother had a BMX bike.

It was a custom-made one. I believe it was just silver and black, and he gave it to me. I was gifted A BMX racing bike when I was eight or nine years old, and I was over the moon about it. I couldn't wait to go ride it, maybe do some jumps, see what it could do. And I'll never forget this, I don't think this was the first day I had it, but it was not soon after I got the BMX bike.

I was riding it up and down my street, getting a feel for it. And the BMX, they've got the front tire and the handlebars. You could just spin them all the way around, do tricks like that. So I'm kind of spinning the handlebars, not all the way around, but cutting the wheel. Then I started feeling myself feeling like I was better than I was.

So I'm cutting the wheel, side to side kind of swaying, and at one point I cut the wheel too quick. I don't know if the tire got stuck in the asphalt or something, but there I went, flying over the handlebars. It's the 80s. No helmet, no elbow and knee pads, nothing. I go chin first onto the street.

Which I'm sure a lot of you can picture in your head. Ooh, it felt great. I had a road rash goatee with fricking little rocks in it, having to get the hydrogen peroxide rubbed in it to kill all the germs. So I tried to be cool and I busted my face up flying over the handlebars of the BMX bike. I don't have too many other memories of that BMX bike.

So I don't know if it got taken away from me right after, like I wasn't responsible enough to be able to ride it without killing myself. But I guess that's the moral of the story. Don't try to be cool. Just be yourself and that's cool enough. But that was a nice long list, a long trip down memory lane of things that were cool, at least in my eyes, in the 80s and 90s.

It's all gonna depend on your age, maybe where you grew up, when you grew up as what you thought was cool. Maybe some of you listened to this episode and you were nodding your head at everything I said, like, oh yeah, that's right. I remember all this stuff. Some of you that are younger might hear me talk about Jolt Cola or the Beastie Boys or begging your pants and just think, God, what was wrong with people growing up in the eighties and nineties?

But it was cool back then. I swear. It's interesting. This ended up being a longer episode than I thought. I wasn't going to do another bonus episode, but this is a topic I wanted to talk about for a while on the podcast going back months when I was still doing it. And this fell luckily at a time that I was able to do more of an extended episode.

Because I didn't want to just gloss over all these different topics. And if there's any of these that you want me to do a deeper dive into in the future, just let me know. Like I said, I might do a deeper dive into my wrestling fandom in the eighties. But yeah, that was a pretty comprehensive list coming up.

Next week's going to be episode 106, the first episode of August. It'll be more of the traditional format that I've done. We're gonna look back more than 100 years to Cape Cod's, very first ever air disaster. It's a wild story that's definitely flown under the radar. We're gonna take a road trip to the town of Rye, New Hampshire.

We're gonna go way, way back in the day and look at 25 years of Google the search engine and what it was like trying to search the internet before Google came around. It's gonna be a brand new top five that are the top five summer vacation movies. And I'll tell you right away, I made such a long list of this.

There are so many good movies, I can't wait to share them. And of course, there'll be a brand new this week in history and Time capsule all coming up next week on episode 106 of the In My Footsteps podcast. And once again, thank you all so much for tuning in. Thank you all for making this return from the hiatus.

Even better than I could have hoped. I've got so many more great things to have on this show. And I'm hoping to add more and more and just make this grow. Support the podcast by buying me a coffee. There's a link in the description. Buy me a coffee.com. Maybe subscriptions are coming up for the podcast.

I'm not sure. I have to figure out the extra content to make it worthwhile. Find more of me all over social media. Instagram, the new Threads app. Twitter, subscribe to my YouTube channel especially. Check out my homepage, christopher sutherland.com. Created and updated by my oldest friend, Barry Menard, special early birthday.

Shout out to my sisters, Lindsay. And Ashley. Hopefully you have a great day. Maybe some of these 80s and 90s memories resonate with you as well. Did you think I was cool with this stuff? If I had it around you? I hope all of you are staying cool. I know it's hot out there. The dog days of summer are getting here hot, humid August.

If it's like that on Cape Cod, I know the further south you go, it's insane, but remember before you know it, it's gonna be December again and snow. So just enjoy it, even if it's hot as hell. Coming up next month, August 18th, that's a Friday at 1:00 PM Come to the Osterville Village Library to see my first presentation about searching for the Lady of the Dunes.

It's a great presentation I put together. I'll have copies of the book to sign. They'll be more about it as it gets closer, but I want to start putting that out there. If you're gonna be in the area, come on out and see me. And you can always find searching for the Lady of the Dunes, the book, the Lady of the Dunes documentary at theladyofthedunes.com that I put together myself.

You can watch the documentary on my YouTube page. I know that coming up in September, I'm gonna have producer Frank Durant back on the show. We're gonna talk about all things to do with his career, what he's got coming up. So I can't wait for that. Check out any of my other eight titles, my eight books.

They're on my homepage, christopher sutherland.com, also at Amazon, and all local bookstores, most of the ones in New England. And if you can't find me on any of the social media that I just mentioned, you can always shoot me an email at Christopher sutherland@gmail.com. Questions, comments, anything like that?

I've said forever. I'd love to do a Q&A segment on the podcast, but I've gotta have the QS to a. Thank you again for indulging my little walk down memory lane of what I thought was cool growing up. The coolest thing you can do is be true to yourself and to take care of your own mental health. Life is short, so make it as enjoyable as you can.

Do whatever makes you happy. If it's not hurting anyone else, do it. And remember in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment 'cause you just never know what tomorrow brings better to enjoy it than have regrets. I'll see you all again next week for episode 106.

Whatever you do this week, have fun, be safe, enjoy. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Sutherland, and I will talk to you all again soon.